Co-sponsored by the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia
and the Barnard College Department of Art History

Vivan Sundaram will briefly present three installations engaging with history over the last 25 years. Memorial, 1993-2014 uses the photographic image in multiple formats of a dead man killed during the communal strife in Bombay, post the demolition of the Babri Mosque. History Project, 1998, a site-specific installation in the Durbar Hall of the Victoria Memorial, Calcutta deals with making of the modern in Bengal from the 19th century till 1947. Meanings of Failed Action: Insurrection 1946, 2017 with Ashish Rajadhyaksha. This refers to the Royal Indian Navy uprising presented as a 40 minute sound work in collaboration with David Chapman exhibited in a mobile sculptural object that stands in as a mini theatre.

Vivan Sundaram, born 1943, studied painting in Baroda and London. Since 1990 he has made sculpture, installation, photography and video. He has exhibited in the Biennales of Sydney, Seville, Taipei, Sharjah, Shanghai, Havana, Johannesburg, Kwangju and Berlin, and the Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane. He has participated in group shows at Arken Museum, Copenhagen (2012); International Centre for Photography, New York (2008); Mori Museum, Tokyo (2008); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2006); Tate Modern, London (2001); and Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2001). He has had solo shows at Fowler Museum, Los Angeles (2015), Sepia International, New York (2008, 2006), Walsh Gallery, Chicago (2008, 2005), and Photographers Gallery, Copenhagen (2003).